Slow response

News-Times, The (Danbury, CT)

Published
1:00 am EDT, Sunday, September 11, 2005

Four years after the terrorist attacks against this country, horrible damage and pain was inflicted again, by Hurricane Katrina. Following Sept. 11, 2001, the government response to help those hurt was swift and effective. With Katrina, everything went wrong.

Things should be better today, not worse. The government has had four years to prepare for overwhelming disaster. Congress and President Bush created a new

Department of Homeland Security
and put dozens of agencies under its umbrella. It was supposed to make government offices work more closely together to respond to things like hurricanes or terrorist attacks.

Instead, the new organization seems to have made things worse. Instead of increasing communication and action, the Department of Homeland Security appears to be awash in red tape and inept reactions. People needing help couldn't get it in the days after Katrina.

People wanting to help couldn't do that, either: When West Virginia Gov.
Joe Manchin
sent several planes to the South to ferry refugees to his state, most of the aircraft sat empty. Manchin ordered them back home in frustration.

"However it was supposed to work, it didn't," Manchin said. "I don't know if it's a territorial thing, which we all deal with as governors; everybody hunkers down and protects their turf, and somebody has to cut through that for the people's sake."

"What is potentially harmful about this whole situation is that people lose faith in the fact that the government can be a protector," Kansas Gov.
Kathleen Sebelius

said. "I'm hopeful that we can use this as an opportunity to demand more of government."

At the moment, state governors reacting to the glaring incompetence on display after Katrina are taking a look at their own response plans, and working to improve them.

In Connecticut, Gov.
M. Jodi Rell
gathered her commissioners on Wednesday to examine the response to a strong hurricane hitting the state.

They discovered that although Connecticut has a state-of-the-art communications system, it has a flaw.

"We learned . . . that we didn't have each other's satellite telephone numbers," said
Wayne Sandford
, deputy commissioner for the Department of
Emergency Services
and Homeland Security.

The commissioners agreed to exchange phone numbers.

Rell has scheduled more meetings. That kind of planning will help prepare for disasters.

Not everything can be planned, of course. That is why it is so important to have the vast resources of the U.S. government available and free of red tape. There is only so much that a municipality can do in the face of catastrophe. The state government also could be quickly overwhelmed if dozens of towns and cities are leveled.

Only the federal government has the capacity to handle the biggest disasters. That is why so many people were disheartened and frustrated when the federal government was so slow to do its job.